Rob Buelow:
Well, I mean, let’s define normal and then call it what it was, which was a decade of declining enrollment questions of value and relevance, rising costs, increased competition, changing demographics and enrollment cliff on the horizon. So clearly the way things were, wasn’t a good fit for the students that could be. And I think, you know, David, when you talked about being, you know, being responsive to students’ needs, having them drive like we have to be customer focused. And the future of higher ed is only going to be increasingly virtual for two reasons. One students want hyper-personalized content. They want touch of a button, convenience and institutions of higher ed need a new model for increasing revenue and driving down costs. And so we have to be thinking about how can we make technology a better, more leveraged component to strengthen our existing efforts?

Keith Edwards:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host. Keith Edwards. Today we are discussing virtual student engagement. Many of us were forced by COVID to pivot, to virtual engagement strategies. What have we learned? What virtual engagement strategies should serve us beyond COVID and what have we learned to help make our virtual engagement even better? Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or Jason to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com or on Twitter. Our first sponsor today is LeaderShape. Leadershape is a not-for-profit organization that has been partnering with colleges and universities and organizations in creating transformational leadership experiences. Since 1986, with the focus on creating a more just caring and thriving world LeaderShape provides both virtual and in-person leadership development opportunities for students and professionals.

Keith Edwards:
When you partner with LeaderShape, you will receive quality developmental experiences that engage learners in topics of courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building. To find more about their virtual programs, please visit leadershape.org/virtual programs. You can also learn more about them through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Today’s episode is also sponsored by Anthology is your goal to engage in effective assessment boost data fluency, and empower staff with strategic data collection, documented analysis and use of results for change, no matter where your campus is in the assessment journey, Anthology formerly Campus Labs can help you figure out what’s next with a short assessment, you’ll receive customized results and tailored recommendations to address your most immediate assessment needs. Learn more about how Anthology’s products and expert consultation can empower your division with actionable data by visiting campuslabs.com/SANow.

Keith Edwards:
As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he/him/his I’m a speaker consultant and coach. And you can find out more about me and Keithedwards.com. I’m hosting this conversation today from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is the ancestral home of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. Today. We’re looking at what we’ve learned about virtual engagement to benefit us all in the future. We have three terrific guests. Thank you all three, so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. And we’d love to have each of you introduce yourselves, share with us your name, your role institution, and pronouns, and a bit about how you’ve gone about doing virtual engagement.David Hibbler Dr. David Hibbler, let’s start off with you.

David Hibbler:
Yeah, thank you very much. So hello everyone. My name is David Hibbler Jr. I use he him, he, him his pronouns. And I have the fortunate opportunity of serving as the associate director of residential education at the University South Florida Tampa campus. And in my role, I oversee the day-to-day operations of our campus population with specific focus on our residential curriculum, behavioral intervention and crisis management. So really, you know, within my role, I see it, you know, as keeping us on time on task and on vision. And when I think about the strategic emphasis of our residential curriculum and how that aligns with our university’s larger student success initiatives you know, it is my responsibility to ensure that we are, you know, we’re remaining laser focused on success strategies that are, you know enhancing persistence and, and making sure folks are getting, you know, throughout their time here at USF and specifically while they’re in residence with us.

David Hibbler:
And specifically with virtual engagement, knowing that the residential curriculum is everything that we do when we were faced with the pandemic the virtual engagement became the thing that we had to do, right? So we had to literally reinvision everything that we did from, you know day-to-day intentional conversations to large scale, you know, departmental initiatives that we knew we still needed to execute to really make sure that we were living up to our educational priority here at USF. So that’s a little bit about me and my role specifically with with virtual engagement so far.

Keith Edwards:
Thanks, David. I really appreciate you being here and sharing us what you and the team at USF have learned. You’re coming back to something I think will be important, but keeping the focus on the learning, but shifting the strategies and how we go about doing that. That’s really great. Alyssa, tell us a little bit about you and how you’ve been in working with virtual engaging students.

Alyssa Teubner:
Absolutely. It’s nice to be here with you all today. My name is Alyssa. I use she, her hers pronouns and I am the assistant director of new student programs at North Dakota State University Go Bison. I spent a lot of my time working with welcome week and then helping with the implementation and execution of orientation and our in our summer programming to really help students transition well to NDSU I’ve also spent a lot of time recently on a cross-divisional committee that is working on curriculum. So super similar to David, how do we all work together to have the same learning outcomes so that students can achieve success? Because they’re getting the same thing over and over from all of us in a very consistent educational experience. So that’s been taking a lot of time and has been really exciting lately also within my role. That also stems to my connection to the content.

Alyssa Teubner:
I think when we had to pivot, it was March, a lot of decisions had already been made for orientation, for sure, and, and definitely welcome week. And so as much as pivot is not everyone’s favorite word right now anymore, that’s what we had to do. And our learning outcomes in our curriculum really were the cornerstone and us being able to do that pretty effectively. We knew at the end of the day that students still needed the same learning outcomes and the same things from us. We just really had to switch up how we were doing that, but the learning, the learning couldn’t change, we still knew what students needed to be successful. And so that’s really what brings me here today is to share a little bit about how we did that.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. And as many orientation folks, you all had to shift, particularly for those with summer programs right away, knowing that this was not going to be able to be happening in person. So how do we do this and doing hybrid models while others maybe hope by the fall, things would be back to in-person and delayed. So you’ve been learning right along. Rob, tell us a little bit about you and the work you do at EverFi.

Rob Buelow:
Sure thing. Hi everyone. Keith David Alyssa. It’s great to join you here. My name’s Rob Buelow my pronouns. Are he him his and I’m the senior vice president of higher education and impact at EverFi. And for those not familiar, EverFi is a social impact technology company that takes on some of the biggest social challenges facing campuses, companies, and communities. So we work with about 25000 K-12 schools across the country and Canada, 1200 colleges and universities, and 1500 corporations globally. And we’ve been providing online education and training for campuses for over 20 years with multiple rigorous peer reviewed studies on our work. And so lots that we’ve learned in that time about virtual engagement and also know I’m a public health professional by training. And a lot of our work at EverFi focused on safety, wellbeing, and inclusion, which I’m sure are hot topics that are going to come up a lot in our conversation today.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Well, Rob, let’s, let’s stay there with you. I think many of us have been doing this for almost a year now. You’ve been doing it with EverFi for 20 years and would love to hear what you have learned along the way about what works and what doesn’t work. I think we’ve talked about what are these universal lessons that people can apply beyond the modules and the things that you’re offering. But I think you’ve learned a lot that we can apply in some of the other work that we’re doing.

Rob Buelow:
Sure, Keith, Well, you know, I start with just thinking about a 20 year timeline and that puts me back to when I was in college. And so I think about the previous work that I had done as a student leader at Penn State University you know, we had tens of thousands of undergraduate students. And so I worked on men, sexual assault prevention, programming there, and tarred. It was hard to reach everyone. There is no way I was going to get my voice in front of all students on campus. So there was this sort of scalability challenge, but even at UC Irvine, where I was leading orientation programs, where presumably every incoming student and their parents were participating in these programs. So we’ve reached everyone, but where are we collecting data? And, you know, often evaluation was a smile, maybe a laugh at a joke. I told a head nod, or maybe that person sitting in the back of the classroom with our arms crossed that maybe lean forward at one point seemed a little more engaged.

Rob Buelow:
And so I think about sort of data and evaluation and assessment. And then lastly, when you have those sort of big group in-person spaces, how are you ensuring that you’re having a really targeted, tailored, personalized experience for everyone in that space? And so, as I talk through it, scalability data design, those are some of the ways that we at EverFi think about the key components of a comprehensive digital prevention and compliance training strategy. And so going a little bit deeper in design, you know, one thing that’s just universal with in-person or virtual programs is involving your target audiences in the development of those programs. And that remains true in the virtual environment. In fact, probably even more so, because you want to make sure you’re reaching every single member of your community with an online training and education program, for example, is every person in your community going to be able to see themselves in the content of your programs.

Rob Buelow:
And so representation diversity is really important having various identities being able to ensure that, you know, you’re giving campus specific information when you’re buying programs off the shelf, they’ve got to be able to have the look and feel of your institution, but then importantly to that sort of learning styles. And when you’re reaching everyone in your community, you’re going to reach people that have a number of different styles and strengths as it relates to how they receive information. And some of the benefits of reaching people in an online space is you can build in sort of adaptive, personalized moments and, you know, scenarios where you can give tailored and targeted feedback. So I think, you know, just considering good learning pedagogy is really important. And the last thing on design that I’ll say is accessibility is just paramount, making sure that everyone can have an equitable experience with the technology.

Rob Buelow:
And that starts to get into some realms of trade-offs where, you know, the more engaging the virtual platform is the harder and the more expensive it is to ensure that all learners can fully participate in that engaging platform. And you’ve got to think about even things like color palette and languages and alt text for images. So that’s the design piece. And then I’ll, I’ll go a little bit into administration and data just administration. You’ve got to have integration with your portals, with your learning management system. Then you’ve got this ability through technology to track participation, to ensure that you’re meeting compliance requirements, not just by sending a brochure of your policy, but tracking e-signatures that people have read and understand it that can create accountability in the system. And timing is so important when I say timing, there’s the amount of time. If someone’s sitting in a seat and looking at a screen and that’s important, and you want to make sure you’re kind of chunking that up and reasonable bites of information and that, you know, someone can log back into a program and pick up where they left off.

Rob Buelow:
That’s really important, but timing is also really interesting as it relates to risk periods. So one of the things, as we think about virtual orientation programs is you’ve got this new cohort of students. We know the matriculation timeline is a high risk period for sexual violence. For high risk drinking technology gives you the ability to reach students prematriculation. And then when you’ve got those students on campus, you then don’t have to guess about what their needs and strengths are. You can integrate data to these pre matriculation programs that will allow you to then meet them exactly where they are, which is where we’re going to have the most ability to make change. So those are some of the universals that we think a lot about around building really engaging and impactful virtual training experiences. And I think the data is really what starts to connect the dots and to all of the rest of your strategy.

Keith Edwards:
Well, I’m thinking about folks who maybe are doing their own online modules, but I think that’s even beyond the capacity for a lot of us, right? So whether we’re just doing a three-minute video, how do you think about the design and the accessibility and engagement and representation and the chunking down even if you’re just doing a short video or a 20 minute video or a, or a 50 minute video so many good things that can be applicable. And really what’s just standing out for me is just the intentionality that I think sometimes we get so caught up in content and you’re really pointing us to content is important, but then it’s the how and the pedagogy and how we’re getting at it and really being thoughtful. And you’re just bringing in so many things to be thoughtful. You’re sharing some of the things.

Rob Buelow:
I mean, yeah, just quickly on that. I feel like if you’re not thinking intentionally beyond just, I need to have someone something that checks a box and can reach everybody at scale and has content that I agree with. If you’re not thinking about design, you’re not thinking about data, you’re not maximizing whatever that investment is, the investment you’re making and sort of build it, your own programs, investments you’re making externally. So you really have to think big picture because it, it is meaningful investment. And to make the most of it really requires you to think about all of the streams of value that that technology can add.

Alyssa Teubner:
Yeah. Cool. I, our whole training theme this summer for our orientation leaders was connection before content. And I can’t take credit for that. We we borrowed that from a consultant we work with, but it truly focusing on how do we make connection rather than just content virtually because that wouldn’t increase student learning and, you know, we definitely think it would decrease it.

Keith Edwards:
Well, let’s give chatting with the consultant you work with. Let’s give Chad a shout out for a connection over content, but I also your example of the prematriculation, I think that’s a real asset to the virtual engagement, right? We used to be able to say, we got to talk about all these things in the first five days that are on campus, which is overwhelming, but, and they, they stopped showing up already. Right. we know that there may be, we’ll show it to more of that in those first five days, but then after that, your, the level of participation goes down, whereas prematriculation they’ll watch just about anything you send them, because they’re so curious, they’re anxious. They want to know what this is about. So what are the things that we want to talk about right away when they’re there on campus?

Keith Edwards:
What are the things we want to do in summer? What are the things we want to do between one of the things we want to do even before? And I think it really opens up a lot of possibilities where we don’t have to wait until they’re in the ballroom. And the Dean is on the stage. Rob, you mentioned a lot of what you’ve learned from a broad spectrum of time of 20 years. What are, have you all at EverFi? What has shifted and changed it in the past year you’ve been doing online? You’ve been doing these modules. What has shifted in your approach and what you’re hearing from students in the efficacy this past year?

Rob Buelow:
Well, I mean, thinking about the past year, I have to just start tipping my hat to my campus-based counterparts and that you know, words like agility and speed and innovation, you know, those are usually words that we use when talking about higher education, but I think it’s absolutely defining of, of what we’ve done in the past year and just extraordinary work, especially coming out of student affairs. But one of the things I think we learned with an apologies Alyssa with that pivot to the virtual environment is you know, we were able to move quickly to that space and then that was very effective, but we learned that we largely didn’t meet students’ expectations around the quality of that experience. And so you see on the academic affairs side of the house, a lot of leveling of the quality standards for the virtual academic experience.

Rob Buelow:
And I think that we owe it to our work to think about how we level up the quality standards of the virtual student experience outside the classroom. So I think that so much of what makes college durable, isn’t just the technical skills people get in the academic curriculum. It’s the fact that we are truly shaping the quality of students characters. And that’s where we’ve had the most learning over the past year, because you think about, you know, last February just all of last year defined by Black Lives Matter. Prior to that, it was #metoo. We’re dealing with a socially conscious activism oriented generation of students. In fact, we learned recently from a survey of about 5,000 graduating high school seniors, that safety, wellbeing and inclusion were as important to them as academic rigor when they were deciding where they wanted to go to college.

Rob Buelow:
And so that’s just a mind blowing perspective about the value and the purpose of higher education. And I saw this great article in the fall and money.com of all places, and it was about college and the Black Lives Matter movement. And it told the story of this prospective student Mariamlim. And she was looking around, you know, months before at the cost of college, the academics, the extracurricular offerings. But I, she really started to narrow her search down. Her deciding question was what will my experience be on campus as a black woman? And what the article really pointed out was we’re not making it easy on students to see the commitment we have to the values that they care about. And so at EverFi, we’ve worked a lot in the past year to look at existing literature about principles of effective social impact initiatives that tend to take place in the in-person environment.

Rob Buelow:
And we started to try to say, how does that translate virtually what does theory based and comprehensive and very teaching methods. And well-trained staff these principles that we know drive good public health work. How do you measure that in the virtual space? Because to do that and to level up those quality standards allows us to tell the story of our work more effectively. And I know we’ll talk more about this in later questions, I’m sure, but I think we need to in the space that we’re in and the environment of higher education at large expand the focus of who we are and what we do in student affairs to the impact that we’re having across the life cycle of students, the alignment to not just the mission of our institutions, but the business of our institutions. And so that’s where we’ve focused a lot in the last year as students have changed, how do we pivot this work and use technology to show up bigger and more prevalent in ways that we know they’re holding us accountable to,

Keith Edwards:
I love these three things that are really guiding students, a choice about where they’re going to go is safety, wellbeing, and inclusion. And you’re reminding me a lesson that I am constantly encouraging leaders. It’s not just that you have to address these things. And certainly we’re not always addressing these things effectively, but sometimes we are, and we’re not being explicit about it. So it’s like, we’re not, how are we telling students and making it known and make it easy and being explicit about all these initiatives and efforts. And your comment about pivoting has reminded me of a previous podcast Luoluo Hong, who is the senior person for the Cal State system talking about, we pivoted, we did it, we did it quickly. And we pivoted that doesn’t mean we pivoted well. And I think today’s episode really is when we made the shift to virtual, what would it look like if we did that really well now we’ve had the benefit of lessons learned David at South Florida.

Keith Edwards:
You all started thinking about this before anyone else. I know you were sort of like, I know if you were, could see the future or you’re just warriors and plan for the worst, but you started planning to shift a virtual engagement before anybody I know would love to hear how you hit the ground running the lessons learned. And I know you’ve also I love your, your team’s ability there to give it your best learn what works and what doesn’t work and make quick adjustments going forward. So tell us about what happened there and really the lessons you want to share with others,

David Hibbler:
Right? Yeah. So usually in February for us and a lot of other curricular institutions, you know, we are now starting to pivot and focus on summer and focus on the following academic year and with that looming pandemic in place you know, we, we found ourselves in that space of, okay, now we have to pivot into virtual engagement. And I think, you know to start that initial impetus to like building, you know, everything that we did was how do we start with the end in mind? So like, how could we still create these learning center and environments when we could no longer meet in person with students, and most importantly, how could we still fulfill our educational priority or that main promise that we have to our residents? So in that one week so like March 1st or whatever that was you know, we quickly digitized our entire residential curriculum and we built it on the learning management system or the software here at USF, which is Canvas.

David Hibbler:
And we named that course in the cloud. And we thought it was a genius idea because we were like, all right, they already have to log in. And camp is everyday. So why not just like insert ourselves right there. And the initial focus of that or thought process was all right, like let’s develop active and passive content and kind of mimic like what you would experience like a video game streamer. So like we’re all, if we all can’t go to like, you know the lounge, let’s all go into the cloud and be there at the same time. And that was, you know, that was great because we initially thought it’s going to allow folks to meet and honor the need for human connection and still stay connected. And from March to the end of the academic year, we hosted faculty led initiatives.

David Hibbler:
We had our final reviews. We created modules and spaces for our living, learning community partners to exist in, we co-hosted you know, events with our counseling department and our wellness unit. And we were constantly updating the information about our COVID policies and academic calendar and best tips for how, you know, our residents could, you know, best shift to this e-learning space. So we were trying to be, you know, that main resource for them. And over the course of those two months, we’d have to a lot of you know, hits with that. But just hits, right. And then I think the momentum and the uncertainty definitely carried us into the summer. And at that point we started to explore Microsoft Teams. That was the product that our Institute institution was using. And we then had a small population on campus.

David Hibbler:
So then we decided to really look to see how our, our intentional conversations and how will these community gatherings, that roommate agreements, all these other educational strategies really gone to work in that space. And by the time July came around, I think if there was one thing, the first big nugget that we learned was we were doing too much and we needed to do less. That digital peak was real, not only for our residents, but it was real for our, it was, you know for our, for our faculty, our staff and our students. And we were exhausted before we even had our biggest, you know, test yet, which was fall opening. So to really learn on, you know, those moments we needed to be extremely intentional about what we were asking each one of our staff members to do while still, you know, trying to solidify or figure out what those most impactful things were.

David Hibbler:
And with that, we doubled down on our residential curriculum. We looked to see what was on our educational plan, what was, you know, the life cycle of the student, you know, kind of as Rob was mentioning earlier and what were the goals that we really needed to focus on. So we continued to track staff engagement, as well as, you know resident engagement in terms of what was working well and what wasn’t. And I think the next big piece of learning that we saw was instead of the cloud, being this synchronous place for folks to go to, it needed to be more of like a resource hub. So what’s like an airport terminal where folks can just go to it and get the information that they need to be successful. So we, you know, we felt like by consolidating all that information in one place for our residents, it was going to be one of the best uses of our time and to really protect, you know the capacity of our staff.

David Hibbler:
So I think those were some of the big moments there just in terms of like that, that thing that we had created. And then the other pieces that we needed to be mindful of was the content that we were still creating. How are we making sure that that was timely, relevant and engaging? You know, so just how we wouldn’t want to show up to an, a bit on campus and just be talked at how are we getting our facilities? How are we getting our presenters to understand, you know, how am I facilitating something rather than just like presenting it? You know, how am I understanding my audience ensuring that the content was relevant and timely. And we really look to social media to try to get people to understand that they understand themselves more. So it’s like social media influencers rather than just like presenting knowledge.

David Hibbler:
So I think that was another huge shift and learning that we had as I mentioned before, scaling back on all the, the synchronous events and only focusing or only preserving that time or that space for the initiatives that had huge impact. So like some of our social justice initiatives or some of the events around the election that we just, you know we just had, or you know, the faculty lead subject matter expert you know, panels where we knew residents really engaged with that. And, you know, it was important for, you know, folks, major career exploration and different things like that. So we preserve that space for them. And still also, you know, thought about all right, so we have the digital fatigue that’s happening, but now we’re having, you know, screen fatigue. And I think that’s when we really saw that in October. So also knowing that the concept of bolts in the cloud was this resource hub. We recorded everything. We were posting things on our YouTube pages, but then we were also like, well, why not create a podcast? Why not, you know, put this,

Keith Edwards:
This idea, we’re big fans of this.

David Hibbler:
Right? So we put that there because then we started to engage folks in a different sensory modality. And while we might not have seen all the tremendous success around that right now, there is still a steady listenership to our podcast bulls in the cloud, they’ll follow it, like it’s subscribe. But we’re, you know, we’re excited to, you know present that content in a different space for folks who might just be walking across campus or they’re in the rec and they, they could just be listening to it. And I think the other two big moments of learning were around data and then accessibility, you know, so we had to re-imagine assessment for our educational strategies to collect real-time data on experiences, wants and goals for our students. So our team really has collected and synthesize the information to share with campus partners and create virtual programming that is relevant, like I mentioned earlier and that aligns with our learning goals.

David Hibbler:
And it’s helpful because there’s little scholarship right now around how to operate in a pandemic. So I think we’re surely, you know, just trying to embody what it means to be a scholar and as we go, as we go. And I think that the, you know, the last part on assessability you know, as Rob mentioned earlier making sure that we’re, re-imagining the space to ensure that students have access and feel represented in the space. You know, one of the things that we’re really trying to explore as our COVID 19 task force at the university will allow us is different grab and go options for, you know, for programming. You know, not everyone has access to the certain pieces of technology. And then our real talks, you know, so that was a social justice initiative that we continued on and making sure that we moved those on online because they were identity spaces that folks could go to, to to unpack what was happening for them and what it meant for them to be a student of X identity and to really align them with certain faculty or different resources on campus to help in that.

David Hibbler:
So those are some of the moments that those were some of the moments of learning that we’ve had here at USF since February of 2020

Keith Edwards:
Well, and so much of what you’re sharing is really reinforcing some of the things that Rob said about design and intentionality and accessibility and assessment. But I love about how student centered your team is. Students are already in canvas, so let’s go there. They’re starting to use teams, let’s go there. They want to be able to move around and work out and be on the treadmill or go for a walk. So let’s go to a podcast and really to not think how do we want to teach this, but how are students best going to learn it? And let’s go do that with them. So kudos to your team. And thank you for all those lessons learned. And Alyssa, you were jumped in right away shifting with a summer orientation and a fall welcome week and ongoing engagement virtually. What did you learn from this quick shift, right? You didn’t have a chance to wait until the fall and see how things played out. What did you learn from the quick shift that you’re really applying as you move into this summer and into the fall?

Alyssa Teubner:
Yeah. I, one of the interesting things for us is that when we started to really figure out what are we going to do, nothing was out there yet. And no one else had really started to figure out what it was going to look like. So I think now we can go and find all these Facebook groups and all these webinars and how do we engage even what we’re doing today that did not exist. And so that was really the first time, I think, in a lot of our careers that we said, we don’t, we don’t even know what resource to use. We got to go back to knowing our students and knowing what we need them to learn.

Keith Edwards:
That was really scary and also kind of freeing, right? Cause when you’re making it up, you can break all the rules.

Alyssa Teubner:
Exactly. And I really David hit on essentialism and that was really important to us not having them on campus for, you know, a full day. We couldn’t spend eight hours in zoom with them. And so truly saying, we know there’s a lot, we want students to learn, but what, what do we really think is the most important for them to have before they get here in the fall? And for us there, it really was how identifying connections to invest in that was the biggest thing. And to really start to lay the groundwork for stewarding communities of belonging. And that was really all we were able to do, but it was still a lot. And so really having to focus on what’s the most important learning it. We also changed our risk level in North Dakota about three weeks before welcome week. And so we were all set to go.

Alyssa Teubner:
We could be in groups, I want to say 250 at that point, still in August. And then that completely changed. And so we had about three weeks and it was really cool to watch how curriculum really centered us. Obviously there was a little bit of panic in our hearts and in our souls, but we knew where to go. And that was what do they need to learn? And what strategies support that really, really well, our guiding star, exactly. That priority we’re talking about. And then those learning walls just made it so much easier and made it feasible to say, we can do this. It never really was in our heads that we could stop doing it. And we just had to figure out what the strategies were. Right. That works exactly. As I was reflecting a lot of the things that we did felt like I was just listing them out, but really they fell under two main lessons for me in the first was that we don’t have to be experts in technology to do it well.

Alyssa Teubner:
It’s really fun to have Rob here. There are places out there that are so good at this that I didn’t have to feel like I had to know every platform and how to do it. And I know there’s privilege in being able to hire consultants and work with companies, and that’s not something that every institution could do, but we were able to leverage the fact that we weren’t paying for $50,000 of meals that summer they weren’t coming to campus. And so how could we use that to, to use expertise, but also to create something that would be sustainable after COVID? So one of the things that we did in working with Chad Littlefields we in me incorporated, he helped us create a really engaging online hour where students were just focusing on making connections through really cool connection cards, through breakout rooms, through activities.

Alyssa Teubner:
And as we started talking, we said, we’re gonna use this forever as students that live more than 500 miles away, we have a lot of students in the military. We have students maybe that truly just can’t make it to campus because they’re working full time and saying, we can offer these sessions at night. We can offer a few of these sessions so that students who traditionally we’ve just said, well, you can take an online course. Now we have this really engaging opportunity where they get to make connections. And so being able to utilize the resources, we had to turn it into a sustainable initiative that we’ll be able to keep was great. Also I found out my students are experts and I had to turn to them as a learner and they were, and they were the ones teaching. And that was really awesome. We made a podcast but I can’t really say we, I told my students, I said, can you, can you make a podcast? Can you figure this out? And my intern looked at all up to it, all the editing, they made, all the intros, wrote all their own questions. And we have a first year series like transitional podcast that they did. I did nothing other than say, please do this. And I think empowering our students to work with the technology that we’re excited about because they’re awesome at it.

Keith Edwards:
Not only did you not have to do it, but those incoming students will listen to returning students way more than they’ll listen to you or me or to any of us. Right. They have that credibility of their peers.

Rob Buelow:
I liked that a lot. Keith you know, as you think about, you know, something like bystander intervention, for example, having it, the model by your juniors and seniors is really the way that you’re going to get your first year students to feel like, okay, well, I don’t have a lot of social capital in this environment, especially now in this virtual space where connections are harder, but Oh, it’s, it’s appropriate. It’s acceptable. It’s expected for people to step in and take action consistent with their values. I think that curricular ongoing approach is really, really powerful.

Keith Edwards:
Well, and it establishes the culture. This is how we do things here and incoming students, no idea. They have no idea what colleges, they have, no idea what NDSU is. And so when returning students say, this is how we do things here you can really move the needle there. Well, is there anything else you want to add before we open it up?

Alyssa Teubner:
Yeah. The other piece that we learned was that it helped us increase in vulnerability and engagement. There’s some of the technology we started using mentee, which is an amazing platform if you’ve never heard of mentee. And that’s where we did our belonging sessions and teaching them that they’re responsible for stewarding belonging and how we define it. A mentee allows you to project it on the screen, but then students can follow along and interact on their phone. They can heart things, they can submit questions. They can. We asked how does being authentic on this campus make you feel? And they got to choose the emoji. And in real time we could see the emojis. And as we’ve all talked about data and assessment, it was really awesome to then have this, an anonymous, we’ll just go with anonymous platform where they could respond.

Alyssa Teubner:
And we can export all that down on our entire incoming class to say, they feel really excited about being authentic or that makes them really nervous. And the same thing with our trainings, we were able to bring in a high school counselors and actual incoming students and high school teachers to tell our orientation leaders, what students were feeling and what their experiences were. And we had never even thought about doing that when really we always had access to do a panel like that. It just, our brains weren’t there and being able to do it. And so looking at where they engagement was really, really awesome and saying, we’re just going to keep doing this because it works

David Hibbler:
Right.

Keith Edwards:
We’re we’re go ahead, David.

David Hibbler:
No, just something recently this happened. So the students here have created a USF confessions page on Instagram. So now a lot of instances, a lot of administrators are following it because of course they have some things to say about some of the residence halls and staff and COVID-19 policies. But now it’s on our radar and we’re being mindful of what they’re sharing and, you know, because it’s just like real data and, you know, assessment right there for us. And we’re actually having conversations that higher up leadership levels.

Keith Edwards:
I love that. You’re thinking about Instagram stories as assessment data, right. And how can we use it to inform there’s no, pre-test, post-test, there’s no regression analysis, but it’s data. Nevertheless, it’s students telling us what they’re worried about, what they’re concerned about. We are running out of time. So I want to get a real quick little snippet from each of you on this question. I hear from some folks who say, you know, I just can’t wait to get back to in-person. I hate, I hate zoom. I hate being on screens. I just can’t go back to doing everything the way we used to do it. That seems short-sighted to me. What, what would you say to someone who said, you know, we had to do this, I didn’t like it. I just want to go back to the way I did things for the previous 10 years. Rob any nudge you, we give to some of those folks who can’t wait to go back to normal quote, unquote, normal.

David Hibbler:
Well, I mean, let’s define normal and then call it what it was, which was a decade of declining enrollment questions of value and relevance, rising costs, increased competition, changing demographics and enrollment cliff on the horizon. So clearly the way things were, wasn’t a good fit for the students that could be. And I think, you know, David, when you talked about being, you know, being responsive to students’ needs, having them drive like we have to be customer focused.

Rob Buelow:
And the future of higher ed is only going to be increasingly virtual for two reasons. One students want hyper-personalized content. They want touch of a button, convenience and institutions of higher ed need a new model for increasing revenue and driving down costs. And so we have to be thinking about how can we make technology a better, more leveraged component to strengthen our existing efforts? Because, you know, I talked to a vice president for student affairs, one of the top schools in Princeton review’s rankings around mental health. And he said, you know, we made that ranking list because we spent a million dollars on hiring counselors, but that’s not going to solve the mental health crisis on campus when students really want to be talking to each other and getting resources from each other. So how can we meet students where they are empower them through technology that support each other, and then really just drive resolved beyond knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.

Rob Buelow:
And you talked about Luoluo Hong from your last episode, Keith. And one of the things I took away from that episode was that we can’t keep thinking about student affairs that’s your second fiddle to the academic mission of higher education. You know, when students go through these programs, they feel more valued. They feel like they belong. They’re happier to be on campus. They even feel like they’re going to perform better in the classroom, complete their degree, be more qualified for future jobs. That’s the way that we ask to be thinking about all of our work. And I don’t think it’s a either or technology or in person it’s gotta be a yes and because the future is only going to be more virtual, right.

Keith Edwards:
I think the trick is where can virtual be better and where do we really need to do that? And finding the right fit, I think is so important. David, Alyssa, you want to add to this?

David Hibbler:
Yeah. I mean, you know, we’re talking about virtual engagement, but I think first it has to go back to the individual, right. And the department and the culture. Right. Because I understand that it’s complex and layered. And you know, I think if we ask ourselves the question, okay. So is the old way of doing things? Is it out of convenience for me? Or is it around that because see for what’s actually happening for the student experience and for the best thing of our institution, you know? So I think we have to really wrestle with that before we before we, you know, have this notion of, yes, we just have to go back because I think during this crisis, you know, we’ve identified new needs. And I think it’s really important to be mindful of all the insights that we have, you know, gotten from experiencing COVID and how are we going to take some of the best nuggets of that or sift through it and figure out how we can continue to move forward because COVID is always going to be a thing, but they’re just going to be, you know, new levels of engagement around that.

David Hibbler:
And I think we’re still just waiting to see you know, just that, that, that shift back over, so that, that hourglass back over. And so our new normal is

Keith Edwards:
So Rob telling us that going back to normal, normal, wasn’t good. David’s saying gets student center, get student center to get student Alyssa, what do you really want to not just talk

Alyssa Teubner:
The director of our counseling center when COVID really came to light last March sent an email to all of us staff that said you’re more resilient than you think you are. And I think that’s true for all essay pros out there. We are resilient. And I think we’ve shown that. And so why would we just erase the past year of growth and things that have gone well. I also think if we are really committed to inclusive excellence, we have to acknowledge that in a person doesn’t work for everybody. And I don’t think that online works for everybody either. But what you were talking about in that hybrid, we have a lot of populations that we just said, if it doesn’t work, I hope you can catch up. And I think that’s affected our mill. I think that’s affected student success. And I think that’s affected belonging and it, you know, it kind of COVID has taught us anything it’s that students really desire connection. And we have a lot of strategies and resources to do that. And why would we do less when we can embrace like this new platform of technology to incorporate strategies?

Keith Edwards:
Well, the technology allows us to, for us to do less and meet more students in a better way, right? Like that’s the secret sauce? Where do we, where do we scale this? Where do we have it happen? So that then we do have the capacity when this student needs to be seen in person, because they have a very significant dire issue. We have the capacity because we’re not dealing with 365 minor roommate conflicts. We’re dealing with this one that’s really bad and needs that. So and I think you’re pointing NDSU you centered everything around connection and belonging, and that’s more important than ever before and also learning, right? And for folks who have a curricular approach to learning whatever learning goals and outcomes you had, whether it was identity or self-awareness, or multiculturalism or equity or wellbeing, all of that is more important now than it was a year ago.

Keith Edwards:
Right. And so the learning is more important. How do we be most effective at reaching so many different people? We are out of time. So we like to end though with this final question, we call this podcast Student Affairs Now. So I’d love to just hear from each of you and maybe Rob, we’ll start with you David, and then Alyssa, but what are you thinking about now? So that might just be like now in your career and your profession, or just at the end of the podcast, like what’s really catching you at this moment.

Rob Buelow:
I, you know, it’s, I’m, I’m resonating a lot with connection before content. I’m going to try to make this connection of, you know, the primary reason students continue to go to college is to get a good job and to how can in this environment where we’ve now got more technology tools than ever to reach students at scale, to track the way they’re engaging with us and to collect data, we should be thinking about curricular arising, all of those outside the classroom experiences and even credentialing those experiences and thinking through how student affairs is giving people the non-cognitive soft skills that are actually 21st Century workforce readiness skills.

Rob Buelow:
That’s what’s on my mind a lot right now is, you know, a student might not think that a diversity equity and inclusion courses for them. But when you talk about how these are the skills that your future employer is going to need you to have, if you want to advance and fit in that workplace culture, that’s the way up for those students. And I think we’ve got to be just leveling up the value of the things that we’re doing outside the classroom, because it is absolutely shaping the life course trajectory of our students.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. Love the what’s in it for me. Yes. What’s on your mind now, David?

David Hibbler:
Yeah. I think for me, just given the time of the year in higher ed recruitment is on my mind whether folks are looking for new opportunities who are already in the field, or they’re entering into the field from grad school, there are more people than jobs right now, you know?

David Hibbler:
And there’s also a lot of folks who are leaving and, you know, we’re over here talking about the uphill battle of what does this new space look like for us and how are we continuing to, you know, to foster connections and just like how technology is going to continue to evolve the field. I want great people still here. And the fatigue is real for folks. Whether it’s the digital fatigue or just the exhaustion of you know, dealing with the health pandemic and the racial pandemic that is happening. And I think there’s a lot of trauma out there right now. And I, I want folks to be, well, I want folks to do what’s best for them, but yeah, just recruitment in general is on my mind. Like I said, the interpretation in innovation fatigue and how we continue to to grapple with that.

David Hibbler:
And then also the last thing traditions, there’s a lot of, you know, lost moments that our students are not having on campus. You know, students will never truly understand what it means to live in Betty Castor hall here at USF. And what is going to be the, some of the long-term impacts of that are some things that we’re trying to focus on right now, because right now we’re, we’ll have about two or three cohorts on campus who don’t, who they don’t know what it means to truly just be a student, you know, on any of our campuses, you know, so we have to figure out how we replicate some of that or, or share the narrative. And yeah, so those that have been on my mind recently,

Rob Buelow:
David, I have to just say, when you talk about tradition though, there’s a great quote from Michael Sorrell, the president of Paul Quinn College. And he said, you know, we as administrators, we have to be less in love with tradition and more in love with our students. So I resonate a ton with that.

Keith Edwards:
That’s a great one. And I was going to emphasize, you talked about the struggles people are having with trauma and burnout and compassion fatigue, two of our most popular episodes, and all of the podcasts have been two episodes on an exact, those topics. People are struggling with that, looking for ways to think about it, frame it, do better. Alyssa what’s really with you right now.

Keith Edwards:
So many things, but I am really thinking about sequencing and scaffolding our learning as we talked about when students come in and then what do they need to know before they even get here? And just encouraging you if you are in residence life and you don’t have a good partnership with orientation, or if you’re an orientation and you don’t have a good partnership with student activities, I can see where this time feels super overwhelming, but this is the time to say, not just what do they learn with you and what did they learn over here with us, but how do, how do we seamlessly do this and how do we collaborate?

Alyssa Teubner:
And we’re currently working on online orientation with advantage design. So we get another piece in that puzzle of how we sequence the learning from the moment that students say, like, yeah, I want to go to NDSU and to build connection. And we’ve just talked a lot about how do we capitalize this time of we’re gonna have a lot more time in the summer than we normally do as orientation professionals. And so instead of just being frustrated, taking all that time and saying let’s build, because normally we would never have a year off from in-person work. And that allows us to change and adapt and justify changes because we have time to do it and to make those really strong changes. So excited about the possibilities there.

Keith Edwards:
Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you all so much. I really appreciate your insights and your guidance, your experiences, sharing your successes and sharing the bumps in the road. And the lessons learned is really, really helpful. Thanks for being great guests and helping us all be more thoughtful about how we’re going to virtually engage students going forward to our listeners. You can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to the Student Affairs Now, newsletter or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. I think we give a shout out to three or four previous episodes, thanks to our sponsors today, LeaderShape and Anthology, formerly Campus Labs. Please subscribe to the podcast, invite others, to subscribe, subscribe to the USF podcast as well, share on social or leave a five-star review. It really helps conversations like this reach folks and build a big broad community so we can continue to make this and other conversations like it free to you again, I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today and to everyone who is watching and listening, make it a great week.

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